Community

A catch-22 situation I suspect.  Banks have gradually been withdrawing branch services, and those that remain open often didn't have knowledgable people who could properly advise and take into account personnel circumstances when applying for loans/mortgages and other services - they had the same resources as a customer had online.  It's was even worse for small business customers, especially during and post COVID.

My nearest bank when I moved to central Scotland was 3 miles away, now its 10 miles away in the centre of Perth, which has the added hassle of traffic and parking.  Fortunately online provides day to day banking requirements adequately, but it would be good to have personal banking return for the masses in some form.

From personal experience I can also say that it not clear who the people are proving the BNPL credit.  I used a BNPL 0% option to pay for an appliance bought online.  No problem there until I checked my credit report some time later and saw they included a credit card from a supplier I didn't recognise.  Suspecting a fraudulent application I raised a report with the credit agency (which gave a very slow response as an aside), but eventually, after several to and fro's with the agency, I realised it was the BNPL.  It remains on my report as an active credit card despite no card ever having been received and the facility was only used once over 2 years ago.  These should be clearly differentiated from other types of product and should be shown as inactive once the credit has been paid off.

...and most will fail because the banks no longer want to support small businesses to recover after the covid closures and, at the same time, the government is not providing the same backing to start ups as they have to established companies (2yrs+ trading history required, which amounts to virtually nothing when a business was only opened a few months before being forced to close for 12 months).  While finance companies were required to provide forbearance during the lockdown, some have been quick to call in their loans less than a month after the doors were allowed to open again and before even pre-covid footfall had returned. Its hardly surprising entrepreneurs have had to turn to friends and family in 2020 as a result.  I sincerely hope we can get back to some form of support in human form which evaluates the merits of a business locally rather than enterprise wide.  The current system works for no-one but the banks.

Developing further mono-culture forestry does not improve bio-diversity and may impact it adversley depending on the existing environment it will replace. Additionally, continous replanting of areas with the same tree species alters soil composition and makes the whole area susceptible to disease (Canada is currently a mass die off due to the spread of a fungus). This would have more value if planted with mixed forestry that can provide several types of wood for selling on, some of which will have a premium value over standard conifer plantations.  Hopefully that is what is being planned.

Nice idea but a claim of "hundreds of pounds on average" seems dubious.  The average needs to be £200 and over. Is that really the case?